Considering the billions of email users in the world, it’s already been established that email marketing is not dead. It’s still an effective marketing strategy that 81% of marketers still rely on as a customer acquisition channel. If you’ve been using email marketing for promoting your business’s products or services and wonder why it’s not working, it’s likely that you’re still using outdated email marketing strategies and processes. Here’s why your email marketing campaigns are not working and what you can do about it.

1. You didn’t build your mailing list organically

Buying a mailing list gets you thousands of email addresses to send your email marketing campaigns to. However, this can backfire as you end up spamming unaware and uninterested people.

By working to build your mailing list organically, you gain a relevant audience that has shown interest in what you have to offer. Initially, this list will be small. However, it is better to have a small list of engaged recipients than a large list who didn’t sign up to receive promotional material about your products and services.

2. You’re not segmenting your email list

Increase the chances of getting your emails opened by sending relevant content to the people who would be most interested. You can achieve this by segmenting your email list based on specific demographics, such as age, location, socio-economic status, gender, and professional title.

3. You’re not exploring key analytics and metrics

Email marketing tools provide insightful analytics and metrics such as open rates, click-through rates, and unsubscribe rates. These metrics can reveal the effectiveness of your subject lines, the quality of your email design, and the relevancy of your content. For example, if more mailing list members are unsubscribing, you’re probably sending email content that they don’t find engaging or relevant.

4. You’re not optimizing your subject lines

It’s challenging to write catchy subject lines without sounding spammy. When writing email subject lines, the fewer the words, the better; aim for 3-5 words. Avoid email spam trigger words that could not only get your email sent to spam, but recipients will not open because they suspect it’s a phishing attack. Good practice for choosing the right subject lines for your audience is A/B testing.

5. You’re not prioritizing deliverability

Emails have massive potential, but only when the email actually reaches the intended recipient. And if deliverability is your issue, you’re wasting time creating quality email content your target audience may never receive, open, and see.

To improve email deliverability, you need to start with a clean list that doesn’t contain incorrect emails, inaccurate emails, or duplicate emails. Remember that emails get deactivated all the time. Therefore, you should be removing email addresses that people no longer open. You can do this by regularly verifying the email addresses on your list.

RunnerEDQ can improve deliverability and reduce returned mail by up to 99%. We verify and correct address data in real-time. We can also help boost your email marketing success by appending your email list with valuable demographic data to improve segmentation.